A/N: This is a work in progress. I don't update often. You have been warned. I have stopped watching Supernatural around the middle of season 12, so there will probably be no spoilers from the newest seasons.

DISCLAIMER: No copyright infringement intended - all characters and concepts recognizable from intellectual work (mainly "Supernatural") belong to their owners. No profit is made from this.

The newspapers often printed a shit ton of... well, shit. It wasn't really their fault, Dean supposed. They simply didn't know any better. Sometimes, though, it really got on his nerves. Where those people seriously stupid enough to confuse a puma bite with a — seemingly — human one?!

This time, though, the article didn't discuss some animal's strange behaviour — "Yeah, right, I'll believe that pumas can climb to the fifth floor of a building in the middle of downtown and abduct little boys in their sleep when I see it with my own eyes" — nor announced the rise of unexplained deaths in the neighbourhood in the last year — "Dude, I'm telling you, I've never seen anything as crazy as that thing. That woman was clearly not human anymore!" The article Dean unfortunately found shoved under the toilet door of yet another motel room while he was trying to stop barfing into the toilet announced for the whole world to see:

WOMAN HOSPITALIZED AFTER ENCOUNTER WITH HAUNTED HOUSE :
4th case in 3 months

The title, written in bolded black letters, took up most of the space of the newspaper's cover.
If that was Sam's way of suggesting something, Dean did not get it.

He found him leaning on the doorframe of the toilet, arms crossed, when he opened the door - having lost half of his guts, or what felt like it, down the drain. Sam's face was contorted into his trademark bitchface. It was too early to be thinking about some possible case that'd fit their job description or about Sam's bad mood. It was too early to be thinking at all, dammnit!

"Sam, it's way too early to be in my face. Go chew on some books like the good boy that you are." His voice was rougher than usual, and he felt like someone had spent their night shoving glass down his throat. On second thought, that might be exactly what'd happened to him: the last thing he remembered was taking that seventh — or was it the eight? — tequila shot at the bar.

"Dean, it's 2 pm!" Sam yelled unnecessarily loudly, un-crossing his arms and waving them around, as if to imitate an octopus. That thought made him want to giggle like a schoolgirl, which he of course didn't do. Some things can be excused only while you're out of your mind from boose. "Where have you been all night?!"

Dean shoved his way past his brother, intending to find a beer in the mini-frigde across the room: that'd calm the pounding in his head. It might be well after breakfast, and lunch too, but it was still early enough for him to be unable to take Sam's incessant worrying and bitching. His dear brother, of course, didn't get the message and blocked his way.

"Dean, I am serious."

Dean had to fight another giggle. Sam had just called himself Sirius.

Perhaps his sleep hadn't cured him from the drunk state he'd got himself into last night, because for some reason the hilarious irritated him and the irritating made him want to laugh hard enough that he'd loose his pants.

"Sammy, just leave me alone. Lemme wake up and then shove whatever shit you want in front of my face. Deal?"

-:-:-:-:-:-

After much huffing and many judgemental stares on Sam's part, they finally looked more into the story behind the newspaper article his brother had shoved into his face. As its title suggested, the haunting, or whatever it was, was the fourth that'd happened in three months. It could be their kind of case, could not, but they still decided to drive all the way to that little town on the edge of Chicago — "Might as well see what kind of pies they sell there, eh Sammy?"

It took them several hours, but they did at last reach the town. It was a calm little place, a bit too calm for Dean's liking. Probably had only one bar, and the only worthy pies would be those made by these people's grandmothers.

In towns this small, everyone knew everybody, and that made things more difficult and much easier at the same time. Everyone had the dirt on everyone, but that meant that real observations were drowned out by petty jealousies and personal vendettas. Dean often had to maneuver around irrelevant subjects without being too offensive, sometimes even flirting with creepy old grandmas, to find out what exactly people knew that could be relevant to the case they were working on.

That evening, Sam and he met up in the room they took at "Granny Paula's Comfy Bed" and compared info. The women — all four of them — that had apparently come into contact with the now infamous haunted house were hysterical and Sam hadn't been able to get anything from them that wasn't a scream. From the hospital staff and the neighbours, both had gathered that the haunted house was in fact a residence for women going through a bit of trouble and that, including the four Sam had met, there were twenty-three of them, plus the staff. No one reported there ever being anything strange about the residence, and none of the old townsfolk reported ever hearing of a murder involving it.

The brothers called it a day and decided to try and dig up more information about the residence tomorrow.

-:-:-:-:-:-

The next morning, Sam and Dean woke up to a pouring rain. Nothing was worth going outside, so they spent the whole day cooped up inside the room they'd rented. After a good six hours of digging around the town's history, criminal and death records, and old scanned newspapers that could be found online, Dean had had enough. The room felt stuffy and he couldn't stand Sam's glances anymore. It was barely seven when he gave up, grabbed a beer, and watched TV for a few minutes, searching for some kind of distraction from the annoyingly loud rain and the pointless research.

He went to sleep much earlier than he was used to, still exhausted from his escapade a night ago. He could feel Sam's stare in his sleep.

-:-:-:-:-:-

Two days after their arrival into town, Dean found himself parking in front of an old building that looked more like an old-school University than a house for women to get back on their feet. It took him a few minutes and several tries to find a spot, as the church next door was overflowing with people coming for the sermon, and the parking spots were very limited. He stayed sitting for a few seconds, looking over at Sam who was sitting in the same tense silence he'd more or less adhered to in the past few days. Dean could just see that there was something eating at him, but that he wouldn't say anything until he couldn't keep it in anymore.

In that aspect, Dean thought, his little brother was just like him.

"Let's go."

In that same penetrating silence, they got out of the car and went up the steps to the antique residence. They had to wait for about a minute before a woman in her sixties came up to open the door. She looked at them as if to say: "Don't bother me, go away."

"Hello madam, I'm Dr. Grey, this is my colleague Dr. Darneck. We're psychiatrists from Chicago and -" Dean managed to say before the woman rudely interrupted him.

"If you're here to call my girls crazies, I strongly advise you boys to get the hell away from here or you'll learn what I'm capable of!"

Sam, ever the diplomat, quickly intervened before the woman started to scream. She'd probably try to get into a physical fight with them, too.

"Ma'am, we are here to provide support to the rest of the women here. We heard of the incidents and decided to come and make sure that it doesn't happen again."

That seemed to calm her a bit, and she let them in.

The building's insides looked just as decrepit as its outsides did. The cracked walls were lined with posters sprouting positive nonsense. The woman led them to an outdated parlor room with faded couches.

"What can I help you with, gentlemen?" the woman asked very pleasantly as they sat.

Dean figured she could go back to her role of nice old lady now that she didn't feel threatened by strangers. He guessed it was Sam's fault. No one had the right to be so tall.

Dean was quite distracted, and anyway Sam had always been the word-savvy one, so the youngest brother spoke first: "As I said, ma'am, we are here to make sure that everyone else here is okay. We are certified psychologists and are ready to provide help and support if needed."

As if on cue, the old woman burst into tears. Dean, who had been looking around the room, searching for anything weird, did a double take. The lady was laying it on a bit too thick.
Dean nearly gagged when there was suddenly a handkerchief in Sam's hand. It was promptly relocated to the woman's face, where she proceeded to make a show of her sorrow for a good five minutes. Dean was ready to stand up and start exploring the building by himself when she finally stopped.

"Oh, it was dreadful. Dreadful, I'm telling you! We are all so scared... And of course the poor girls..."

Dean had lost his patience. "Ma'am, do you remember anything odd happening before the... incidents? Or during them?"

"Odd? What kind of odd, young gentlemen?"

Sam's stare once again burned into the side of Dean's face, who really didn't care about his brother's care for tact and being gentle. The woman was obviously faking her shock. If Sam was too nearsighted to see that, Dean wasn't in the mood to take that bullshit from him.
Sam carried on with the usual tripe through clenched teeth that was easy to spot for someone who knew his brother as well as Dean did. "Cold spots, strange sounds or smells, odd things like that."

The lady (she could become an actress, honestly, Dean thought) seemed to think really, really hard for a few seconds before breaking into a sad face (something he liked to call Regretful #3).

"Sorry to disappoint, but no. Nothing comes to mind."

"Then perhaps you could tell us more about what has been happening. Only someone as close to the situation as you could know about the intricacies of everything that you went through."

Did Sam really have to use such complicated words? Not that Dean didn't know what they meant, he wasn't illiterate, thankyouverymuch, but he didn't use words such as "intricacies" and went by just fine. Show off.

"Well, you see, it all started with the nightmares. Of course, no one believed poor Cassandra. She was so convinced, you know? That they were real, and the other girls had to calm her down every morning. It was dreadful. We were all worried about her, the poor dear. No one could do anything - she started shrieking day and night for no reason at all! She wouldn't sleep, wouldn't eat. We had to send her to that horrible hospital you know? My poor Fergus died there in 97', you know?

"And then Rebecka, oh, poor Rebecka. We simply thought she was getting too worried about Cassandra. She had nightmares too, but we all had them, so when Margaret found her with scratches all over, we thought she had been doing them to herself in her sleep. And then she took that fork and... Oh, it was horrible, I still have nightmares about all that blood!

"Lucy had always been quiet, you know. Nobody knew her much, and she had been with us for a few weeks only. She scared us all to death - we had to wrestle the knife from her hand! I called the police immediately while the girls restrained her.

"At first, I thought maybe they were catching it from each other, you know. They all slept in the same room, so maybe it was the feel of the place. But when everyone was moved from the room, it still went on!

"Pola caught that too! She was so twitchy all the time, and she has been like that for all the time she has spent with us here, but it started to become worse a few days before she..."
From her gossip face #7 (appropriate for situations such as the mysterious but very interesting death or accident of the neighbor) the woman suddenly put back on her sad face and exploded into tears.

"Pola f-fell down the s-stairs! T-they told u-us she lo-lost her v-voice bec-cause she was s-s-screaming so much on the way t-to th-the hospital!"

Dean had had enough of that show. He quietly excused himself, mentioned he'd find the toilet himself, and left Sam to deal with the wails of the old lady. The glare directed at his back didn't melt him on his way out of the parlor.

It took him a few minutes to explore the whole building. His EMF started screaming as soon as he turned it on, and stayed off charts the whole time. Whatever had been giving the women nightmares in the building was either very strong or very present.

When he went back to the parlor, Sam was resuming his calming speech in fluent psycho-shit.
"Thank you for sharing this with me, Mrs Whilthshire. I believe that expressing your emotions can be very beneficial," Sam shot a pointed glare Dean's way, "and will help you and everyone else who lives here. If you would agree, we would like to revisit you, perhaps tomorrow, and maybe discuss what I told you with the other residents."

"Ah, yes of course, Dr Darneck. Please do come tomorrow," the woman sniffed as she saw Dean had come back. "The girls will be delighted to have someone to talk to in these difficult times."

-:-:-:-:-:-

The ride back to the hotel room was tense. Sam was still fuming about whatever he was fuming about, and Dean kept the silence lasting as long as it could. He knew Sam would explode as soon as they weren't in a small space with transparent surfaces.

The explosion came as soon as they closed the door of their rented room behind them. Dean had barely made two steps inside when Sam started yelling at his back:
"Dean, what's your problem?!"

He didn't say anything in answer. His path to his assigned bed was suddenly cut off by a gigantic irate moose of a man (sometimes Dean was still surprised at the sight of his little brother, who wasn't 'little' in any sense of the term and looked nothing like the cute little boy he had always bitched about having to babysit).

"Dean, I'm talking to you. Don't ignore me. Just... don't. We need to talk."

Dean sidestepped him:
"We have nothing to talk about, Sammy. Go to sleep."

That evening, they both fell asleep to a silence even more tense than the ones before it.